Marking a possible sea change from its cloistered culture, the GOP announced Monday it would open up its voter data file to innovators who wish to build apps and other programs on top of it.

The decision, explained in a 98-page “autopsy” report of the 2012 election, is one that digital campaign consultants have clamored for and believe will go a long way toward closing a critical capability gap Republicans acknowledge they have with Democrats.

“Application programming interfaces (APIs) should be open to Republican candidates, state and national committees, friendly third-party organizations, and supporting vendors/consultants/developers in primary and general elections,” the report heralded. “Digital can simply no longer be an afterthought in our campaigns.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus backed this up in person before a breakfast at the National Press Club at which he unveiled the report. A gang of party insiders — his Growth and Opportunity Committee — spent three months analyzing the party’s problems.

Under the new concept, programmers will be able to “access our data and then provide user-friendly products that will empower technology-driven voter contact,” Priebus said. “This is the first time a party committee has taken on such a task. Over and over, our co-chairs heard of the need for an ‘environment of intellectual curiosity’ that encourages innovation.”

The 2012 results were a rude awakening for Republicans, who expected far fewer minority and young voters to go to the polls. Better, more accurate voter data, which the Democratic Party had cultivated for nearly a decade, helped the Obama campaign identify and contact supporters as well as raise money more effectively and drive voters to the polls.

The report also offers a long list of other tech-related reforms, including the hiring of a chief technology officer by May 1 and the opening of an RNC field office in the San Francisco area.

“Many of the best minds are on the other side of the country,” Priebus said. “Having an office there will make it easier for technologists to contribute to our efforts.”

Opening up the voter data and giving developers a chance to manipulate it to make outreach more effective is something digital consultants have placed atop their wish lists. On numerous occasions, GOP strategists worried that such an idea ran counter to the RNC’s tendency toward tightly controlled information.

“This is it in spades,” said Mark Harris, campaign manager for Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). “This is a huge step to making data more available and more accessible. There may be pockets where there are data quality issues, but there’ll be more eyes looking at it.”

Among the harsher notes in the report, the RNC seemed to acknowledge that Data Trust, a voter-file vendor whose board is stocked with former RNC insiders, could be replaced. Several political operatives said the Data Trust interface is not user-friendly and the data itself is inferior or merely adequate. In several top races, campaigns didn’t even use it.

“Although it is the preference of the task force that the RNC continue its relationship with Data Trust, if Data Trust is not capable of rising to the new data challenges we face, other partners should be identified,” the report said.

It’s unclear exactly how the open-source data arrangement will work. The report speaks vaguely of the party granting permission and creating a space on a soon-to-be-redesigned GOP.com where developers can present apps.

“Data exchange agreements and other legal mechanisms must be in place to ensure the strict legality of this effort,” the report said. “With such a platform, GOP users will have access to advance information and intelligent technology without significant financial burden and with the assurance that valuable proprietary information of the GOP will not be misused.”

More details likely won’t emerge until a top technology guru is hired by May 1. While the report said that role will be occupied by a “chief digital and technology officer,” RNC chief of staff Mike Shields told a closed-door meeting of digital consultants and vendors Thursday that there could be a different title.

Aaron Ginn, a 24-year-old entrepreneur who has been vocal about his disappointing experience working for the Mitt Romney presidential campaign, was encouraged by many of the ideas. He is a ringleader of the so-called Republican Stealth Mob, an underground group of conservative technologists that wants to help the GOP innovate and defy the notion that everyone in Silicon Valley is a Democrat.

Still, he’s skeptical that the GOP’s “app store” idea will work.

“I am unsure if the RNC has the technical capacity to pull off this project,” he said. “At my company we are launching several APIs and it requires a lot of maintenance to encourage an app community to foster. Having the vision of an ‘app store’ is great, but you need a reason to use it and build on it. So, take a step back and ask yourself, why would I plug in? Is the data reliable? From what I hear, it is not.”

Priebus clearly labored to seem more modern, important given that his report acknowledged that the public perceives Republicans as old-fashioned. He spoke of hackathons to take place in such high-tech hubs as Austin, New York and Denver and noted he’d be hosting a Q&A on Twitter on Monday.

Even Priebus’s conclusion showed an attempt at sounding more modern.

“With that, I’m happy to take questions from all of you here — no hashtag required,” he said, sticking to his prepared remarks.

The report found a clear thirst among Republicans to understand online campaigning better. In a survey of political operatives, 29 percent said they wanted more training and education on “digital” and “social media,” the report said. In an open-ended question, those terms were the second-most chosen.

That said, as significant as the digital component of the plan was both in writing and in Priebus’s talk, the breakfast audience seemed less engaged. No questioners — neither in person nor via the Internet — inquired about anything related to the RNC’s digital plans.

One question came close, fretting about whether it was a good idea for the RNC to map out its new strategies so publicly. Wouldn’t that be handing Democrats a road map to counter?

Priebus said the risk was worth it because the transparency would help build trust among Republicans.

Democrats, though, said there was little for them to learn from Republicans anyway.

“They’re making a pretty strong effort to figure out what we did in 2012 and how to copy it by 2016,” said Stu Trevelyan, president and chief executive of NGP-VAN, the company that manages the Democratic Party voter file. “We’ve moved on to the next thing.”

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 12:32 p.m. on March 18, 2013.